On the Unknown Island
by Samuraibrarian
Summary: This is a re-setting of a scene toward the end of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in which Carth and female!Revan hash out what to do about their mutual attraction.


Sleep wasn't forthcoming, so instead, Meirah slipped out of the Ebon Hawk to walk and to practice lightsaber forms where the sea, sky, and shore intersected. The intermittent flashes of cloud-to-cloud lightning over the water on the horizon and the bright swirl of the blades around her swept back the specters that increasingly crowded around her when she closed her eyes. The cyclic roar and hiss of the breakers, rumbles of distant thunder, and the sabers' hum made it easy to temporarily ignore the chatter of confused, competing voices in her head. The scrunch of wet sand and the occasional shock of cold water on her bare feet were a gentle reminder to keep her mind in the here and now. The masters at the Jedi Enclave on Dantooine had stressed that seated meditation was an essential skill, but Meirah found it infinitely easier to open and empty herself to the Force while in motion.

The Elder Rataka would be performing the ritual to open the Temple of Ancients tomorrow. The disruptor field that had grounded the Ebon Hawk and blocked access to the Star Forge was located somewhere inside. A number of Malak's acolytes were also reputed to wait within. Meirah hadn't been able to extract any further information from the Elders; they'd only insisted that this time, she had to face whatever and whomever those walls contained alone.

There was an odd note of comfort among the dread in that. After wrestling with visions and impulses that she didn't understand and fraught encounters with so many people she'd never met who claimed to know her, Malak's revelation that she was Darth Revan had given her a name to put to the troubles she'd been wrestling. She wasn't sure how she knew, but a battle with the specter of Revan in the Rakata temple seemed certain.

She finished an elaborate two-saber form, lunging as she uncrossed the blades from an overhead block and swept them outward in a vicious shoulder-level horizontal scissor. Bringing the sabers back to vertical, she extinguished them, and replaced them at her sides.

"Meirah."

Carth stood to one side of her, a few feet out of the range of one of her sabers. She wondered how long he'd been watching her. His rumpled hair and carelessly skewed dress suggested that he'd also tried and failed to sleep. "Can we talk?"

"About me being Revan?" she asked. The rest of the crew had assimilated the fact of her *previous identity remarkably well over the course of the escape from the Leviathan and the flight to Rataka Prime; Carth, though, had been terse and distant, avoiding her entirely when possible. Not that she blamed him for it. Being conscious of the person she used to be, and of the suffering that Darth Revan had sown, made her distinctly uncomfortable in her own skin, and made Carth, who had only recently come to trust her intentions toward him, all but impossible to face. She'd known this conversation would have to happen sometime, and had been dreading it for days.

"If you're ready, then yes, so am I."

Meirah took a deep breath, and tried to quiet her nerves. It was unfair, she thought, that it was so easy to be composed in the thick of a firefight, and so damnably difficult to face down a mere exchange of words. "Let's walk." She inclined her head to indicate the shoreline stretching away from the Hawk.

They proceeded down the beach in silence for several moments, Carth trailing slightly behind Meirah. Finally, he spoke. "I can't hate you."

He made it sound like an admission of defeat. This was the last thing Meirah expected to hear from the man who had expounded at length on his suspicion about her since the day he'd fished her half-dead carcass out of an escape pod on the Upper City of Taris. Then, his grumbling had been easy to dismiss as paranoid and ridiculous. In hindsight, it had been starkly, presciently reasonable.

"Why not?" After the ordeal on the Leviathan, hating herself seemed like an increasingly realistic option.

"I tried. I wanted to hold you responsible for all the things you've done. For my…for my wife. For Telos. For Dustil. But I_ can't._"

"Again, why can't you?" She ventured a glance back at Carth. Silhouetted against the flickering sky with his shoulders hunched against the wind, he looked hollow-eyed and haunted.

"When Saul died, I got the revenge I wanted. But it didn't bring me peace like I thought it would."

Knowing of Saul Karath's high position in Malak's command structure and absence of scruples in carrying out indiscriminately destructive campaigns had done nothing to endear him to Meirah. Enduring mockery and torture at his hands on the Leviathan, and witnessing the special cruelty he meted out to his former protégé was worse. But Carth was right, putting the old man down like a dog on the bridge of the Star Destroyer had yielded strangely little satisfaction. Less, even, when, out of an awe-inspiring depth of spite, Karath had spent his dying breaths breaking Carth's hard-won trust in her. Meirah had grown to passionately despise Bastila's frequent sermons on the fine points of the Jedi Code, but her assertion concerning the emptiness of making a goal of revenge was turning out to be deadly accurate.

"I understand," she replied, feeling grim. If destroying the man who'd wrecked his life and a sizeable swath of the universe had turned out to be so devoid of gratification, what benefit could there be in setting himself against the person who'd already been all but obliterated by Malak and the Jedi?

He drew even with her and said, "All I can think of now is the promise I made to protect you from what's to come. That gives me something to look to beyond mere revenge."

Meirah swallowed hard. Retaliation for past wrongs was a poor basis for meaning and comfort, but she wasn't sure that his pledge to keep her safe, made in total sincerity and almost-total ignorance, was any less precarious. "Protect me?" she said after several seconds of silent struggle. "I appreciate that. I'd be a blaster-burned spot on the floor ten times over by now if you hadn't found me. Right now, though, I don't know what to make of it." She sighed. "Jedi mind-magic aside, Carth, I can't see the future. I didn't know it at the time, but you were so right to be wary, of the situation, and of me. For all that's happened these last few days, I may, in the end, be the threat you have to guard against."

"No," he said decisively. "You're not Revan, not anymore. Whatever part of the Sith Lady, whatever of her darkness, remains with you, she is present, but she isn't who you are. I can't hate you because, in spite of her, and in spite of the Jedi and their selfish, short-sighted attempts to make you their tool and then hang you out to dry when your usefulness to them expires, you were given the chance to be something more than someone else's weapon, and you took it. Now I know that I have that choice too."

"I don't know how much choice has had to do with it," Meirah admitted, bitterness coloring her tone. "Sometimes it would be nice to believe that I have this infinite variety of options stretching out before me, and that because I'm on the side of good, or exceptionally courageous, or at least pretty smart, I choose the right thing, even when it's really difficult. I think that's what most civilians think being a Jedi is about, what makes them different from mere mortals. It's not like that. I'm pretty much like everyone else. I muddle through and do the best I can with what I've got. I survive, somehow."

He caught hold of her shoulder and spun her around to face him. "I think you're selling yourself short. From where I stand, you have this huge destiny waiting for you. And so far, you've made more of it than anyone could expect. But I see how it wears on you. If you try to go it alone, I'm afraid that, eventually, it's going to swallow you whole." Even obscured by the near-darkness, the way he looked at her made Meirah feel as if she'd been nailed into the ground. The candid intensity of it hurt like a gut-shot, but she couldn't tear herself away. His voice dropped to just above a whisper. "I mean, is there room in there for me?" he asked "Will you let me help you?"

Feeling off-balance, she laid a hand on his arm to steady herself. She thought of Saul putting the screws to Carth in the Leviathan's brig, knowing that his suffering would undo her more effectively than any other punishment he could devise. She thought of how, even moments after Saul had told him the truth of her identity, Carth had interposed himself between her and Malak, and been dumped to the deck for his trouble. That memory made her stomach lurch. "I don't want you to be hurt on my account, Carth. Call me strong if you think it fits, but that I can't handle."

His expression warmed. "I think it would hurt me worse if you didn't let me try." He edged closer and folded her free hand into his. She hoped he wouldn't notice that it was shaking. "Meirah, I'm not asking you to guarantee my safety. I'm a cynical bastard, now as much as ever. Don't think I don't know what I'm asking for. I'm counting on a struggle with Malak and the Sith, one that may or may not end on the Star Forge. Assuming we come through that alive, we'll likely be stuck with a Jedi order that treats you as their unclaimed freight. Either way, I'm also prepared to protect you from yourself, from Revan, if it comes to it. "

Meirah was at a loss. "And you complain about my stubbornness?" she said with an incredulous chuckle. "You're a hard man for a Jedi to be with, you know that? The flak you catch from Bastila and me is mostly a matter of our wounded pride for being shown up as rank amateurs by comparison. With your delusions of persecution, every one of which has come neatly to pass, your possession of a fully-functioning moral compass, and your selfless devotion to hopeless causes, I'm beginning to wonder whether you aren't really the one who ought to be in knight's robes."

He cracked a smile, as dazzling as heat-lightening and no less brief. "Whatever's happened up to now, there's going to come a time, very soon, where you're going to have to make a choice, and there won't be any turning back. I want you to make the right choice…I want to give you a reason to." He tipped his chin down so that his face was inches from hers.

"When I had nothing, you gave me a future. I want to return the favor. I think I could love you…if you give me the chance."

There it was. Most choices were, like she'd told him, something to parse through as best a person could, with only the most abstract understanding of how they might eventually impact your future. The magnitude and the consequences of this one, though, were plain. No turning back.

She lifted a hand and gently brushed his forelock out of his eyes. He leaned his face into her hand.

"I think I could love you, too. If you will fight for me, I will fight for you."

He gasped, and enfolded her in a nearly-crushing hug. His chest heaved as she laid her head against it. The sense of being at once utterly unmoored, overwhelmed, and unassailably secure was a metaphor that the masters had used to describe moments of total oneness with the Force, one that she only now could appreciate. Meirah resolved to file that paradox away for contemplating at another time.


End file.
